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May 9, 2019

Thursday, May 9th 2019 Roland Huget

58A. In complete opposition ... and a feature of the four other longest answers: POLES APART. Or a Warsaw couple when one of them is away on a trip?

And the themers:

17A. *Finds flaws (in): PICKS HOLES, usually as relates to someone's argument. Polemicists are adept at this.
21A. *Casino fixtures where blinds might be used: POKER TABLES. This one might need some explanation. In some poker games, famously Texas Hold 'Em, after a new hand is dealt there are two "forced" bets to get the action started, the "small blind" and the "big blind". Two players must bet, irrespective of what their cards look like. The blinds rotate around the table as each hand is dealt. The amounts of the blinds are posted at each table so you know what you're getting into before you sit down, e.g. "$5/$10".
36A. *They make nuts healthy: POLYUNSATURATES. The "good" fats found in nuts, fish and other foodstuffs.
50A. *Skilled debaters: POLEMICISTS. Word of the week for me. Excellent.

This was a thoroughly enjoyable solve. It took me just over half an hour which is quite a bit longer than I'm used to on a Thursday. I didn't see the theme until the reveal, and that let me go back to 17A and fill in a lot of gaps in the Northwest. And some great words - polyunsaturates, polemicists, some long entries in the downs and I don't recall any clunk in the fill.

Great job from Roland. Let's take the Grand Tour.

Across:

1. Award named for a goddess: CLIO. Advertising awards. The muse was "the proclaimer, glorifier and celebrator of history, great deeds and accomplishments".

5. Put down: ABASE

10. First choice: FAVE

14. "You're __ luck": OUTA. I looked askance at this one, I'd always seen "outta" before. I acquiesced in the end.

15. __ shorts: BOXER

16. Truth stretcher: LIAR

19. "Star Wars" sentence inverter: YODA

20. Baseball bat wood: ASH. I thought it was ELM at first, but it's too heavy for modern-day bats.

23. Sign-off word: YOURS

25. River through Tours: LOIRE. Beautiful part of the world, the Loire valley.

26. Shot water?: RAPIDS

28. Rash: HASTY

31. Citation ender, briefly: ET AL. Texts with multiple authors in citations are shortened by citing the first author's name, followed by "et al".

49. The Huskies of the NCAA's Big East: UCONN. The women have won 11 basketball and 5 field hockey national titles.

54. Tank contents: GAS

57. Tip: APEX

60. Wild, all-night party: RAVE

61. Tiny swimmer: AMEBA. I still can't get used to not spelling this AMOEBA.

62. Marine threat: ORCA

63. Kept in one's sights: EYED

64. Fixes: SPAYS

65. Urban bane: SMOG. Much, much better here in LA than it was when I first moved here. The worst smog I've ever experienced was last year in Delhi, when the AQI was 440 (out of possible 500); anything over 300 is categorized as "hazardous". I came down with bronchitis and tore a rib cartilage one night I was coughing so hard.

Down:

1. Historic NYC club, with "The": COPA. Crosses filled this in for me, it didn't spring to mind.

24. Like some fried food: OILY. Yech. No excuse for this. Usually caused by not having the oil hot enough before you start cooking, and not keeping it up to temp.

26. Gym iterations: REPS

27. French possessive: À TOI. "Yours".

28. Squirrel away: HOARD

29. Fine __: ARTS

30. "The Simpsons" disco guy: STU

32. Old Russian ruler: TSAR. Always need to wait for a T or S to decide between this and CZAR

33. Coerce: STRONG-ARM. Nice fill. A lot of quality in the fill today.

34. Thurman's role in "The Avengers" (1998): PEEL. Diana Rigg played Emma Peel in the original British TV series back in the '60s.

35. Home to K2: ASIA. The world's second tallest mountain, and most demanding and second-most dangerous to climb behind Annapurna.

37. Clear, as a copier: UNJAM. My printer has an annoying habit of reporting a paper jam when there isn't one. I still have to go through the rigmarole of "clearing" the non-jam before it'll start working again.

This is my all-time favorite Roland Huget puzzle. As Steve said the fill was very well-done and the arrangement from Pxxxx to POxxx to POLxx to POLEx to POLES was perfect. I did not know ROSA Ponselle .

As a proud alumnus, I must point out that UCONN men's basketball has won 4 national titles.

I looked sideways at OUTA and AMOEBA, but let them both stand. I always heard the expression as POKES HOLES -- then 59d could've been the reveal. Not sure I've ever seen POLYUNSATURATES or POLEMICISTS in a cw before. We've seen ROSA before; it came to me immediately, and I ABHOR opera and screechy sopranos. 46d -- what Boomer hopes to avoid. I enjoyed the romp, Roland. Steve, thanx for keeping things on the runway and out of the river.

We got an unpredicted respite from the rain yesterday, giving the creeks and rivers a chance to recover. More storms expected tonight, but today I'm picking up an extra M-o-W route. Don't expect any problems.

Very elegant puzzle! WEES about POLEMICISTS. It's one of those words that if you asked me I couldn't tell you the definition- but usually deduce the meaning by context. On the other hand, I talk about polyunsaturates vs saturated fats every week!

Jim B, iteration is an important process in computer programming. DO...WHILE loops iterate through the same lines of code WHILE the stated condition remains true. The programmer must make certain that the condition becomes false at some point, otherwise the program would keep looping forever.

FIW, carelessly missing the singular POLY UNSATURATEd. Thought K2 might be in an opera - oh yeah, that would be Aida, not Adia. Erased adios for YOURS, el al for ET AL, miles apart for POLES APART, sage for SEER, and alps for adia, whatever the hell that is.

DNK that master debaters are POLEMICISTS. Must have been a cunning linguist that came up with that one.

FLN: Please be gentle with the name Archie. It's my middle name. My dad's too. NOT Archibald, just plain ol' Archie. Seems like there was a fair-to-middlin' QB from Ole Miss that shared that name. Pretty good sire of QBs too.

Thanks for teh fun puzzle, Roland. My favorite was ASH and OAK in the Northwest, where great hardwoods come from in real life. And thanks to Steve for the fun tour.

Good morning allThanks Roland Huget for a good workout this morning .Good thing I had a little more time this morning as the puzzle seemed impossible at first pass. I struggled along slowly but once I dared fill in POLYUNSATURATES I gained confidence and the rest came a little easier. Lots of WAGS that filled in via perps today. As D O said I hesitated at OUTTA and. AMOEBA Finally FIR with write overs at HOARD and IPAS. Thanks STEVE for the review and OWENKL for your always enjoyable rhymes. Cheers

Finished in under 12:00 today, but seemed a lot longer than that.I'm sure lots of thought went into the theme, but I don't feel that having the word poles separated throughout the puzzle adds any more amusement/joy. I guess I'm becoming a fan of theme-less puzzles.

Almost gave up in the middle bottom. Was bouncing around and making great progress and then hit a wall down there. Was sure of ACTS AS and IPAS, but COMP, ILEA and SPAYS were eluding me. Worse than that was I couldn't make sense of the clue "Best before" cousin. Then I "got" the sense of the clue and USE BY went in, and ILEA followed in a flash.

Wanted DETEST before ABHORS, but the perps said no. STRONG ARM is my first definition for COERCE, and it came to mind immediately.

Thought of PK at BOOKS. She's commented about "keeping the books" at the dealership.

I remember being in Little League and we all used to try to emulate the deliveries of Luis Tiant and Juan Marichal.

Steve, I was with you on OUTA and resisted because it normally has two Ts. And with AMEBA missing the O. But I had the beginning and ending As. Gave in when I keyed in the crossing B from USE BY. Agreed about no excuse for OILY - it just takes a thermometer and patience.

This was an enjoyable solve that had just the right amount of bite for a Thursday. My w/os were Solo/Stag (Solo would have been a nice complement to Vader and Yoda), and Hint/Apex. With Tip for the cue, I immediately thought Hint. I, too, liked the Oak ~ Ash duo. I was 99% sure that the opera singer was Mimi Ponsell so I resisted changing it until UConn forced me to. Later Googling turned up a Mimi Bonzell, which must have been stuck in my memory bank. Aioli is becoming a regular. CSO to Lemony and Hatoolah at the recurring UConn and to Boomer and TTP at spare. As Lemony pointed out, the progression of the separation of the Poles was quite impressive.

Nice job, Roland, so thank you and thanks, Steve, for the Grand Tour. Always enjoy your culinary tips and advice, as well as your travel tidbits.

oc4beach ~ The winner of the Iris Miss Best Potato Chip Contest is Gibble's by far. Middleswarth's are okay (better than some of the national brands) but nowhere as tasty as Gibble's. It must be the lard! Thank you for introducing me to both, especially my fave, Gibble's.

FLN

Sam Acker, thanks for stopping by. I'm glad you found the Corner so you could enjoy the many complimentary comments on your debut puzzle. Congratulations, again.

Sam,great theme. I wondered why the themers didn't show opposites and then I saw the parted poles.I thought of polyunsaturated with just PO------- but thought it might have a tricky ending. Not!Interesting expo, Steve. Ameba is an acceptable alternate spelling of amoeba. I like it better because it is closer to the pronunciation. The same with orthopaedics/orthopedics and harbor/harbour. The extra vowel seems old fashioned to me. Just my personal preference. I am throwing no shade on the BritishersI have never seen OUTA instead of OUTTA, but apparently it is okay.For a news junkie like me, polemicist is quite commonly used. There are many refernces to it in print journalism.Busy day.

Used a little more white gunk today, but finally FIR. No searches needed. Didn't remember ROSA outright, but had a vague recollection of her from many years ago. Got the theme at the very end, but fill wend okay.DREI - L. German dree, Dutch drie, English three.

I believe the ameba spelling was not contrived for this puzzle. I have seen in in many places. It is not rare. For example:-"Ask me about brain-eating amebas,” a supervisor in the waterborne disease prevention branch beckoned on a sign. Wall Street Journal May 16, 2018- Partially inflated at the Roswell, N.M., launch site, it looks like an ameba dressed in haute couture. Slate Mar.25 ,2013- His soul is a Dead Sea that supports neither ameba nor fish, neither noxious bacilli nor useful life.” Hubbard, ElbertOTOH, I believe OUTA is much rarer than OUTTA. In fact, I can find only one sample sentence, although this spelling is entered in dictionaries as a variant. I have never seen OUTA in print before."I dunno if the system's run outa paper, but I'm not, as they say, gunna make any enquiries."Jon Cleary YESTERDAY'S SHADOW (2002) Spellcheck flags it.I am amused that Zahnartz is literally tooth doctor.

Musings-Today I am ACTING AS a history teacher and they are studying Watergate. You know you’re older if the history you are teaching was current events in your life.-Of course our members of Congress are POLES APART and leadership on both sides STRONG ARMS members to vote to support the party first and foremost-Il falegname ha costruito LA SCALA (The carpenter built the staircase)-People who can clear copier JAMS are heroes!-My DW is slavish to the USE BY date and as soon as that date hits, boom, the product goes into the trash.-Seniors in government class just walked in and they are taking a 100-question citizenship test today. Quick, who’s your representative in the House?

A neat puzzle right OUTA (outta?) the box. VADER vs. YODA. Tricky clues- Shot water, Let out, put down, fixes. I noticed the Ps but the OLEs were ignored. POKER BLINDS is an unfamiliar term and POLEMICISTS, while easy to figure out, is another word for sesquipedalians.

Sign-off word? ROGER, no, it was YOURS.Hoppy brews-ALES, nope, it was IPAS.Unaccompanied- SOLE or LONE? nope, it was STAG. Stag women?Place to unwind- It should be a BAR but I knew it would be a SPA.ILEA- I'm always confused with Ilea, Ilium, & Ileum- leave it to the MDs.ROSA Ponselle and EMMA were perps today. Diana Rigg is the one I remember.AMEBA? It's AMOEBA but IMHO, the simpler spelling should be correct. But English uses words from many languages.

Gary- since you are 'acting' at teaching history today, ask the students if they've ever heard of STALIN, MUSSOLINI, HIROHITO, CHURCHILL, or FIDEL CASTRO. I'd bet less than 10% know a thing about any of them.

Bit of a Thursday toughie for me, though I got the northeast corner right away. I'm not sure I ever saw "Star Wars" but by now I sure know YODA and I even remembered Darth VADER (is that his name?). Got TORTE and DREI without any problem--German helped this morning, as others also noticed. And it was fun to see the POLE words fill in slowly. Many thanks, Roland, and I always enjoy your commentary, Steve.

Archie fans....you now have an heir to the throne with your name. He’s not a prince though...succession rules are not confusing at all.

And I must protest 49A....as others have noted, this is simply incorrect and has been since 2013. So....we're supposed to know all sorts of foreign words and other minutiae, and this gets by both the constructor and editor? C’mon. Get in the game.

Spitz @ 10:33 ~ I'm not quite as precise as Joann about Use By dates, but I just received an order from Shoprite that included a pound of butter with April 26, 2019 on the package, so I sent it back for credit.

Tough but doable pzl today. Maybe the Naticks in the bottom center would have done me in if I hadn't spotted POLEMICISTS by accident. I can't claim full completion credit. Like Big Easy and probably many others, I had ALES before IPAS, but POLEMICISTS straightened me out.~ OMK____________DR: One only, NE to SW.A dearth of consonants leaves us with an opaque anagram. All I get is..."EARLOBES."Yeah.

Good day. I hope your day is as good as mine—I get to babysit my granddog all weekend while my son and daughter-in-law attend a wedding in C.C.’s stomping ground.

Thanx to Roland for an entertaining puzzle and to Steve for the commentary.

I had more trouble with this one than on the usual Thursday. FIR in 12 minutes.

In no particular order:

* 11D: Yes, Steve, garlic is pungent! Also sick-making for me. Just can’t abide it.* AMEBA, OUTA? Casting no aspersions on Yellowrocks, those spellings will never cease to set my teeth on edge. * ARCO was a learning moment. * I waffled around 59D for quite a while before POs came up from the depths. * 26A: Shot water = RAPIDS; my favorite clue/answer. * Lots of excellent fill such as STRONG ARM & ITCHY PALM.

Yes, editors made a big error with the clue, leaving UConn in the Big East. In their defense, it did not slow anyone down and the clue did not suggest current membership. They are the only Huskies to ever play in the Big East.

I am suggesting that baby Sussex was named after either Archie Goodwin (my choice) or Archie Leach. Or maybe Archie Andrews; Archie Bunker; Archie Manning or Archie Griffin

I got a kick out of seeing ARCO crossing GAS. Such wonderful fill today! Like WikWak, "Shot water" = RAPIDS was my favorite clue/answer. Like many of you, I balked at OUTA. Didn't we have it before not too long ago? Yes, we did, I just looked it up. It was on April 1, 2019.

Google says Butter, unopened, will last a month past its exp. date in the fridge,and 2 weeks past in the fridge if opened.What Google does not know is if the butter fell off the truck somewhere...Good Call Irish Miss...

Many, maybe even most, of us are happy, thrilled, shocked? when we complete a later in the week puzzle correctly and unaided. And then someone comes along and announces that it took him/her 2:18 but that included time to refill their coffee cup. Maybe I got up on the wrong side of the bed today. But speaking maybe just for me, pat yourself on the back but don't feel like I need to know how adept you are.

This morning I went to the dentist for a crown but my new and wonderful dentist told me I didn't need it; he simply filled it and for half the price of a crown. My previous dentist, that is the practice where I went, was outrageously expensive. They didn't follow the insurance schedule.

Thank you Roland Huget and Steve for a greatly entertaining puzzle and commentary. It was a fast solve with no bumps on the road. I, too, grimaced at OUTA and AMEBA but it's a puzzle and what to do, what to do.

I loved POLYUNSATURATES spanning the grid! And I recalled ROSA Ponselle from previous puzzles as well as LUIS Tiant. I had the --NN so UCONN filled quickly. Like others I liked seeing VADER/YODA crossing. My daughter and SIL celebrated their anniversary on May the fourth, being avid Star Trek fans.

Jayce - I had forgotten that ARCO was a gas brand. I was at the one at the intersection of Topanga Canyon and Ventura the first time my polarized sunglasses blanked out the display at a gas pump. I almost went inside to complain, but for some reason took off the shades and saw the numbers. Polarized glasses weren't new, but LCD displays on gas pumps were.

At 7.43AM desper-otto wrote, "The programmer must make certain that the condition becomes false at some point, otherwise the program would keep looping forever." Amen, brother! Hard to believe, but a programmer that no longer works at the company I work for apparently had never taken Coding 101. His sloppiness was not discovered until one day my boss came to me and asked me why one of our monitoring stations wouldn't boot. So I did some detective work and found that the modem in that system had died. Apparently the inept programmer's code would test for the presence of the modem and not continue until it determined the modem was working as expected. Since the modem was dead, the program would never continue. Of course I proposed that the code should be re-written to continue on in spite of the hardware failure and to report the error. My proposal fell on deaf ears. Re-write some code? Oh, the horrors of updating hundreds of systems! The decision was made that in case of a system failing to boot, i.e. hanging in an infinite loop, the "fix" was to dispatch the field service technician to blindly replace the modem, even if it was not known that the failure to boot was due to a failed modem or to some other cause! If replacing the modem didn't fix it, the protocol was to send out the field service technician again and have him willy-nilly replace hardware components until the system would work again. Often the technician would bring back multiple components that he had swapped out, but there was never any testing of them to determine which one was the "bad" one and which ones were good all along. And the flaw remains to this day, even though the programmer does not.

Luis Tiant not in MLB HofF is a disgrace. A masterful pitcher. The disgrace is on the hands of baseball writers. Why are Gammons and Shaughnessy sitting on their hands.(Insert Charlie on the MTA)

Rigg over Thurman

It's called a dipthong not to be confused with Brazilian bathers. Owen have at it

Ok. So Rich didn't need “Big East”. I agree that this was a great xword. Made me think but kept to Thursday level difficulty. As YR said POLEMICISTS is fairly routine. 21A’s a great clue, fooled me but obvious after

"On my--What?" Somehow I knew ARCO w/o any prompting. And it isn't because I once studied violin.That was ages ago, for a short while in the 6th grade. I remember the teacher telling my mom how I was the best student she had when it came to learning how to "hold the bow.""After that," she said, "he just rested on his laurels."~ OMK

DNF and FIW - @27d, I had ETOI and @5d I had ABHORe [thought that's how it's spelt :-(]. Never could finish off PEEL nor ASIA (what's a K2? Oh, thanks, Steve). @42a is NOT tREs. Oh, and I had GIs in my tank.

I pretty much "flew" through the puzzle until I got to the swath from ILEA going NE to just under SPA. That seemed to take forever.

Thanks Roland for an otherwise fun puzzle. Much sparkle in the fill as Steve called out.

Thanks Steve for the expo - loved the Yoda meme and cute Warsaw joke. If you only drop by The Corner on Thursdays you must think I'm a dolt; I'm too often relying on you to finish Thursday and yet I solve most Fridays!

Not sure about one or two Ts in OUTA re: luck but I know it's only one T for time. [YR @9:29a & 10:25a- click that for OUTA not only in-print but stamped-out]

WOs: Started Sage but waited for perpage. I had Poke HOLES @17a. (Hi D-O!)ESPs: spelling the last 1/2 of POLEMICISTS (I know the word 'cuz DW uses it but spelling...), iRCO [sic], ROSA, LUISFav: um, FAVE :-)Sparkle: FLYBOY, ITCHY PALM, FLEXED, FJORD [Fav runner up - I learned that word in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and the word always evokes the mice], STRONG ARM.

CSO to me @ROSA's clue :-)

{A+, A+}

Disappointing DR today OMK :-)

IM - Oh, yes; missed opportunity on Han Solo; nice catch :-)

Anon@8:19, jfromvt, PVX - if it was clued as AAC Huskies, it might not have evoked mascots but instead breed (AKC(?)). Never heard of AAC (watch, I'll hear it on the news tonight :-))

Today was Alan's birthday. He received many birthday cards at his new address. I took him out to dinner and then we returned to his new home to have birthday cake with his friends. He helped me order the cake last weekend. His house mates gave him presents and a card. He is thriving, so happy and relaxed. It does my heart good.Saturday I am hosting our family's May celebration, Alan's birthday, my grandson Kenny's birthday, and Mother's Day for Motoko and me. I'm outta (not outa) here. Time to see what the over-the-top polemicists have to say on TV.

“Time to see what the over-the-top polemicists have to say on TV.”YR, such a beautiful day and you're gonna spoil it? But having followed the saga I'm so happy for you

What I liked about this xword was the way a few perps revealed the long fills. Fe. Having followed TTP and Boomer that slash was recognized and soon I had enough to spot POLEMICISTS (not difficult for a natural . ). SPAYS and RAPIDS too.

Terrific Thursday. Thanks for the fun, Roland and Steve.I'm late to the party tonight after a day with three of the grandchildren at our place while their parents celebrate their Anniversary.My tired brain took a little longer than usual, but I did find all those Apart POLES. The P, PO, POL ETAL arrangement was appreciated.